June 26, 2017 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Like all dishonest journalism, Cara Tabachnick’s article on parental alienation and the Family Bridges reunification program starts with a thesis and ignores the overwhelming weight of evidence that contradicts it (Washington Post, 5/11/17). In Friday’s piece I gave a few examples of her use of words, phrases and sentences that seem to intentionally mislead the reader. But those few barely scratch the surface. Tabachnick’s piece fairly teems with dodgy phrasing that points the reader toward her thesis – that parental alienation is a dubious theory and efforts to ameliorate its sometimes horrible results are mere “shams” designed to line the pockets of less than scrupulous mental health professionals.

As I mentioned Friday, Tabachnick undermines the first part of her thesis – that the very existence of PA is doubtful – by selecting a family on whose experiences she hangs the rest of her article, in which alienation had pretty plainly occurred. Tabachnick’s own description of the children of the Jeu family looks very much like that of alienated kids. Into the bargain, the mental health professional assigned by the court to evaluate them and the judge in the case concluded that, in fact, their mother, Sharon Jeu had alienated them. It’s a strange way to cast doubt on the existence of PA.